BTW, how are we liking Matt Smith? He seems to have slipped into the role quite comfortably already from what I’ve seen.

I have to admit the same occured for me with Colin Baker, which probably goes some way towards explaining why I don’t have that many fond memories of his incarnation of the Timelord.

Even more weirdly (and to finally convince you I’m a raving nutter whose opinions on everything are probably best ignored), I actually liked Mel! Seriously! I loved the scene in The Trial of a Timelord in which she made her first appearance, mainly, I’ll admit, because it was so ridiculous! Trial… was a bit of an odd story, though, wasn’t it? The way that it was four stories in one (giving it, I do believe, the biggest number of episodes of any Doctor Who story), and the way that each of those stories was frequently interrupted by courtroom scenes (something that I found more than a little irritating after a while). I also found it strange that given the whole premise of the thing was the Doctor being put on trial for alleged past crimes, none of the crimes shown were ones that had been dealt with in previous stories (although I later realized that, if they had been, the whole thing would have been one of those awful, tedious “clips” shows that the American studios seem to love churning out). Not being from England myself, I didn’t recognize Bonnie Langford or Linda Bellingham from those other roles of theirs you mentioned, although one of the other actors – the man who played the captain of the spaceship in the mini-story Terror of the Vervoids, I believe – was familiar to me from his long-running role in an Australian soap opera called G.P.. Terror of the Vervoids, incidentally, was my favourite part of Trial…, mainly because it was one of those aforementioned colourful, trippy stories, and also simply a nice creepy story that could well have stood on its own.